An Unreasonable Man

Green Venture Capital December 16, 2006

Kleiner Perkins is famous for funding Amazon, Google, and Netscape. Now they have put a substantial portion of their capital to work in green energy investments. From an interview in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal:

WSJ:

As of last spring, Kleiner said it planned to set aside $100 million for cleantech investments. Where does that stand now?

Ray Lane:

We’ve doubled it. The way we think of it half our resources (main stream investments, not including special funds) are going to green tech right now.

They are also awarding $100,000 prize every year to companies that make significant advances in green technology. I love the prize idea in general: #1, #2. However, this one doesn’t seem to be very effective for spurring innovation. To do that a prize needs to be very large and be rewarded for a specific goal that’s stated up front. This seems to be designed for spurring press coverage.